would almost certainly have failed and he would not have been able to get sufficient votes or he would have relied so heavily on democratic votes to do so that he ran the risk of an insurrection and in fact in the detail in my book there was a meeting during the whole summer, you know, showdown over the debt ceiling and with some of boehner's closest allies had met in the speaker's office and said to him, john if you come back with the deal, that you fashioned with obama this doesn't get more than say 100 votes or so and the republicans, cancer has cantor has started a whispered campaign and you are

going to be -- we saw it happen with speaker gingrich and it can happen here. boehner walked away from a deal shortly after that. >> i want to come to the interplay between the leadership on the republican side in in a second but i have to ask this based on what you said. i think you know the president gave what was initially an off the record interview to the "des moines register" editorial board, speaking although he did not get the endorsement of that paper in one of the things he said in the interview was he believed he could get a grand bargain struck on the debt ceiling if he were reelected on november 6. a son what you're saying they may not be possible if if the freshman and now sophomores and many members who come and don't eventually give a nether blessing to cut a deal. in her may feel in the same tough spot now that but he was last year. a ground part and based on what you say may not be possible if obama wins under any circumstances.

>> this is outside of the book but i will do it anyway because i've been doing general election for the times. talking to jim messina the campaign manager of the obama campaign and david axelrod and rahm emanuel and stephanie cutter and asking them you know, how would the next years under obama, given that the house composition -- >> is almost certainly going to be similar. >> how will things be different and uniformly their answer, in other words the talking point, was that the fever will break, that the american people if they vote for president obama for another four years will basically be voting against obstructionist and the republicans will get the message and they will walk in a sultry fashion toward the center of. >> i can see that happening at all. >> no, no and if that is her talking point and they are siding with the.

>> are you optimistic to say that governor romney would have one that there is and you waiting for him after he gets into office? >> no, no i'm not and i wrote a story for "the new york times magazine" on governor romney and specifically on his kind of governor that appeared three weeks ago or so. the way that the piece concludes is by, i interviewed a number of people and particularly the more conservative republicans and they were licking their chops and said this would be a great moment for them if mitt romney wins. a moment for them to legislate very aggressively a conservative agenda and my question to several of them was, what if that's not so? what it president-elect romney decides that he will govern more in the mode of his first two years when he was governor of massachusetts? they uniformly said they'd be disappointed and in fact

labrador one of the stars of the tea party featured in my book said there would be an insurrection. people say we have been really boisterous. you have seen nothing yet. if president romney behaves like a conservative it's going to be the death of the republican party. >> i am just going to let that sit there for a second and let that sink right in. [laughter] let's come back to the leadership. i want to ask you specifically as individuals and as a threesome that way they do or do not work well together, boehner cantor and mccarthy. characterize each one in shorthand beginning with speaker boehner. >> john boehner is a washington lifer and was not the obvious choice to be leading this sort of tea party crafts. nonetheless you can see the tea party phenomenon for the trade -- freight train that it was an elected to be on the train rather than underneath it.

speaker boehner campaigned heavily for a number of the tea party freshman andy also you know believe that this presented the republicans and indeed america with a great opportunity. his belief for example was that this would be a perfect run for entitlement reform. if you are are going after entitlement reform ideally you have the bipartisanship specifically at democratic president so they could not walk away from it. and so, he believed that he could leverage the deep conservatism of the tea party. but he has failed to do so and the tea party freshman with whom i have spent a great deal of time and i have spent time with an awful lot of them, liked him personally and found him admirable in the way is a genial ceo but certainly not as there are real leader.

that has been implicitly clear throughout the 112 congress. eric cantor the majority leader is a bit different, somewhat younger than boehner, a very clever guy, very very ambitious. he has his own channel to the obama white house as he and vice president biden are very close and i think they found they need each other i believe it was biden and this would not surprise any of you that was leaking to eric cantor that speaker boehner was pursuing separate talks with obama during the so-called -- in which eric cantor was a part. this may cantor livid and he walked out of those talks because of the dynamics going on with boehner. does this sound childish to you? >> the question i'm going to ask

is that eric cantor walked past john boehner leaving out an open window -- window he would not hesitate to push him with a? >> for one 11 thing boehner is an even tempered so is boehner. unless the moment is absolutely right you tend not to be able to get ahead by declaring. >> the there is a -- between cancer and boehner. >> working more or less in the middle is the majority whip kevin mccarthy. mccarthy has, he has only been in for three terms and so in a lot of ways he is a freshman himself and he recruited a number of the freshman and became an away sort of the big brother to them. it was a very clever move on mccarthy's part because the freshman many times they have behaved and then the straw that has stirred the drink of the 112th congress. anybody who knows they are whims and their sentiment, kevin

mccarthy. mccarthy and cantor are very close. day or two in the troika of the young guns. the third is a guy you may have heard of from wisconsin paul ryan, romney's running mate and they sort of represent the youth movement and there are a lot of people and boehner in boehner's world who don't trust mccarthy because he is very close to cantor. this is the kind of thing washingtonians built up to a frenzy over but the reality is there is not day-to-day parliamentary and more often than not they walk walk in lockstep but certainly there've been moments that stand up being one of them where you could see separate dynamics taking place between cancer and boehner that had them both looking over their shoulder. >> you mentioned paul ryan and i can go on without asking you about him and in the role that he has played in this congress and the degree to which his celebrity has embraced by the

republicans who are as ambitious as he. he was the one who kind of got out in rows of the others and as mitt romney's running mate. everyone in the republican ranks happy to see him there and is there any resentment of of him clinics do they respect him as much for his brain and his ability with numbers? >> they do respect him and i think there are those -- the people who resent the mistrust paul ryan in the republican party are the members of the so-called tuesday group which is the group waning in numbers moderate republicans. they resent the imposition of the so-called ryan budget as the republican house budget. that budget by the way, ryan's budget had been kicking around for several years when he was the ranking member back when pelosi and the democrats from were in power.

he would introduce it as the minority budget and i think 20 to 25% of republicans routinely voted against it. when the tea party wave came in and the republicans retook the house and now ryan was chairman of the house budget committee, ryan was very very clever too for one thing develop consistencies on these think-tanks ollman the leadership as well. the small number of moderates were drowned out and ultimately that will pass with a thing for republicans voting against it which is an astonishing kind of consensus. right and is widely admired amongst the freshman and he's a very clever guy, ryan. a as my colleague said that "the new york times magazine" in his piece recently on brian, ryan is one of those guys who pulled off being a politician who makes you feel like he's above politics and is not about politics and in

fact he practices his own brand of politics. >> should romney and ryan lose in november 6 in congressman brian presumably gets reelected running on the same day and he returns to the floor is that going to be okay with him and will ryan with his newfound celebrity possibly displace boehner, cantor and the others in some sort of leadership role? >> i don't think that is the path he's interested in. he would like to be in the house and it is not going to be in the white house being the chair of the house budget committee is where the action is in on the democratic side chris van hollen made of movement away from the so-called leadership track to be the counterpart basically to ryan because he knew that was a high-profile assignment. stay you mentioned of democrats who reminds me there are still democrats. you can be forgiven for thinking there were not any. we haven't talked about many

democrats so far at the prospect of the democrats recently beginning into the majority. i have asked you about rain or in cantor. she was speaker pelosi and she is now leader pelosi. i guess i was in a given that she would be minority leader after they lost the majority but she still is in control and it doesn't seem to be any insurrection on the democratic side to change the dynamics. >> there will not be any kind of insurrection. i interviewed minority leader pelosi for this book and lots of other people on the democratic side of the leadership. in following around the the republican freshman, it was interesting to see these guys have all been there was one reason i wanted to do this book. one thing that did was their opinion of pelosi. they came to really respect her that she holds her caucus together and it's a much more diverse caucus.

she can count better than anybody in washington specific lake county 218 which is the number it takes to get a majority to pass a bill in the house. she can count the number that it takes for her to become house minority leader and indeed after she lost the speaker ship and one of the blue dog democrats keith scheuer decided to run against her she made it very clear very quickly that she had the most on him and a lot of people who had she not move so quick he might have supported shuler realize it was not a good night yet to be in a losing cause. she is a very very formidable person. obviously what she also is this the face of the democratic house and the democrats writ large and that has not been a good thing. there was a meeting that i detailed in the democratic caucus in which pelosi called closed-door. none of the staffers were present and pelosi said what i

would like is just for the people who were defeated in this election, i would like it to be there opportunity to. the line was very long. a lot of democrats did loosen some of them said they lost because of obamacare. other said they blamed no one and it was just the nature. several of them particularly the dog democrats who are the in the smarter swing district stood up and said speaker pelosi i have a lot of respect for you but you have become the face of our defeat. through no fault of mine i campaigned as a moderate congressman and i governed as a moderate congressman but when it came time for a campaign against me, all they did was run as a picture of you nancy pelosi in a picture of me. we were best buds in that i ran again against a guy who just be me they are going to do that again. that is their playbook and its successful. pelosi has been, firing pelosi

of, there is a big banner in 2010 after the tsunami hit, the tea party wave in the republicans were in power. they put that sign down and set fire pelosi. >> is pelosi or the president, leader pelosi or the president more demoed -- problematic for the democrats in terms to their desire to regain the majority of the house? >> they are both problematic and you don't find a lot of democrats and liberal districts that would need a a rock obama's help anyway campaigning with the president. they use the obama apparatus in the pelosi apparatus for fundraising and that's about it. that's how many seats are necessary for democrats to regain power. there appeared to be a moment in

time when particularly after kathy hochul one in upstate new york. taking chris lays siege on medicare on a platform basically and it looked like that was going to be the winning argument, simply to say the republicans will end the medicare guarantee but now they are not sufficiently potent. >> on to take the modern grader at the texas book festivals prerogatiprerogati ve. one of those freshmen elected in 2010 blake farenthold from corpus christi who is an interesting guy. if you pay attention to the congressional delegation he is more interesting and more fun to write about it more fun to cover than the others. why did you pick on him and why did you pick him to write about? >> many of you who are from texas know the word farenthold a note in a different context. his grandmother the liberal

icon, he did not get his politics from his grandmother. farenthold was somewhat of an accidental congressman. he ran in 2010 in the texas congressional district that includes corpus christi and at the time included brownsville. a district that was 70% hispanic. blake himself spoke no spanish and was a political unknown however in 2010 despite the number seemingly being overwhelming against him, it doing a midterm hear a lot of voters stayed home and there was a big tea party movement in the corpus area. he won after run off by about 800 or 900 votes. >> keep beat solomon ortiz senior who was a longtime democratic leader. >> that's exactly right that he arrived. first he was inexperienced in the ways of governance and politics writ large. he arrived three and a half weeks after everybody else did because of the recount.

farenthold was, if followed the congressman around to get a sense of the congressional experience and his was a citizens politician who try as he might could never quite catch up. holding onto the medicine ball for dear life in and never getting on top of it. he told me he had this recurring nightmare that he was alone in his office and there was no furniture and only a phone that rang and rang and rang and he was never able to get it. he told us of a group of business lobbyists and he said you know you have that anxiety dream. anxiety dreams are thick in the life of blake farenthold. like you need to be the guys who tell to tell me to wear my pants and tell me what things i ought to be looking for.

i remember farenthold saying to me very early, trying to apply business acumen to the model of politics and he said legislative director, it's like a part-time job to me. and what that meant is the first continuing resolution with everybody throwing out these amendments and it's quite a glorious project. farenthold didn't understand what any of them were because he had no legislative director to explain them to him. he had been in a radio disc jockey and he communicated quite well. he did not have a congressional web site because he used to all the computer business. he know that to put up the web site it would only cost axe number of dollars to do and there were only five companies in washington d.c. that seemed as a secure fit on the contract. he found the prices they were charging work reaches. he didn't put up a fight for a

while so in a lot of ways he became his own worst enemy on top of which is white as is often the case, the spouse became interested in lots of things and this interred cause great personnel turnover. farenthold, in addition to that he was elected on a tea party wave. after he is duly elected he realizes he is the congressman of the district and its 70% hispanic. there's a solution and it's called redistricting and that is exactly what happened to him. he was hoping a lot of latinos would show up and didn't know what their concerns were it but only tea party actress turned up. i have been to some of these town hall meetings in the tea party guys would stand up and say we did not send you to washington to compromise. >> before we open it up to questions, i have to say who in

gods name would want to do this? you make serving in congress sound so unattractive. why would anybody -- you say we denigrate public service in this country and we don't get people a reason to run. you basically for a half hour gave young people every reason to do anything but run for congress. >> the institutional counter link is john dingell, democrat from michigan and he has been serving since 1955. previouslpreviousl y his father sanded -- served in the same congressional district until his father died in the sun ran and took his place. dingell is, used to be thought of as illiberal and no one thinks of him as a liberal and certainly the democrats don't because they marginalize him. and yet thank you has proven and i show it throughout the book

that even with the democrats in the minority and even with him being removed from the pecking order power, they want to get things done. this why the guy knows how to pull strings on behalf of the district to get parts appropriated to get bills passed and he passed his pipeline safety bill which is essentially a regulation bill during the tea party congress. it's almost unheard of, but dingell is i think a dying breed. his philosophy is, you govern from the center. you begin writing a bill from the center which means you bring everybody on board, put them in a room and talk about what they like. it's not the way it works in today zero some policy where their idea now the republican leadership and previously with the democrats were guilty of the same thing, let's take our opposition far to the extreme and make them, although in that direction and we get something towards the center than okay.

but let's start there. that is not the dingell weigh in unfortunately i think his way is dying. >> the passing of an era. we have time for questions, about 15 minutes. the mud upon is in the center. even though we are amplified please use your outside voice so we can hear you appear and we will take as many as they tell as we can take and when they tell us we can't take anymore we are going to cut you off. >> i am for specific question. given the too big to fail banks, now bigger and more consolidated than ever, and given the dodd-frank bill reforms regulations have been downloaded and postponed and delayed and delayed i'm assuming there will be another banking crisis eventually, maybe next year. do you think that if another t.a.r.p. bill comes up to bail out wall street in the banks do think the tea party in the house would go along without this time

or do you think they would stop it in and? >> you know is the answer and i think it's hard to -- particularly in conservative circles. weblog for example helped put her together and the conservative plank of his party have never forgiven him for that. the point of view whether it's actually worn out or not is that sort of deals anything that basically causes more regulation of the banks creates more problems than it solves. i'm speaking now of course of the house republicans and i don't see the composition ideologically changing anytime soon though it is interesting that in the congress, and the house of representatives there are still a lot of people from the hot-blooded class of 1994, the newt gingrich revolution and that's one of them is retiring

and his name is steve latourette. he was a moderate of the tuesday club and retiring in large part because of the disgust of the tea party. this is a guy who in a lot of ways was the forerunner of that movement but who mellowed over time. another way of looking at it i suppose is even a class of 1994 was nowhere near as conservative. >> those guys are liberals by comparison so he if you think the tart bill or something like that comes, it will be let the banks go? >> banner in the house leadership will have a decision to make and he is not going to want there to be a question on his watch. for that matter romney supported t.a.r.p. and he supported it rapidly. i mentioned in the story that i wrote for "the new york times magazine" about governor romney that in 2008 when the financial crisis, when the bank meltdown was upon us and john mccain

was deciding just to suspend his campaign his decision came as a result of a meeting he had with his economic advisory team. a lot of these were big corporate donors and that romney was among them. all of those guys basically said, take whatever bush is offering on tar. the next day in fact romney won on "the today show" and set yeah i support t.a.r.p.. governor romney has modified many of his positions but he has not modified that. under those circumstances yes there could be a recipe for more regulation. >> what impact if any do you think the changes in california in their method for electing congressional representatives will have and -- >> are you talking about the redistricting? >> democrat versus democrat and

republican versus republican? >> if i understand you right, there was a kind of bipartisan commission that redesigned the redistricting. i actually did a story for the "atlantic monthly" on redistricting and it mentions this thing. the belief by many politicians is that there is no such thing as a bipartisan or nonpartisan board and points to the california commission is a failed experiment because the democrats have managed the influence of tame but probe publica would suggest tends to influence a lot of these commissions. having said that there are a number of other states in the u.s. but do have bipartisan redistricting and just for what it's worth the reason why it's a failing topic is i'm often

asked, if this is the worst congress ever or now but we wish congress would need, what would be the solution? there aren't many of them a come to mind. the redistricting reform would certainly be one of them because what happens is, when we create these districts that are so rigidly read or so rigidly blue then we send to washington people who are beholden to the most extreme elements of their party. those people have no incentive whatsoever to compromise or to reach across the aisle so as long as we are basically allowing the majority party of any given state to gerrymandered districts that will favor their party and the opposition party, then we are perpetuating or exacerbating the political divide. i think there's a problem of course of who is going to pass this bill? there's a guy named john tanner who was the head of the blue dog

democrats and during his last couple of terms he kept trying to bring it up. and nancy pelosi would hear nothing of it. she would say that is very interesting johnnie would never get it scheduled. another blue dog democrat have been trying to get it on for consideration and no dice. unfortunately, to reform congress, congress has to play along and that doesn't seem likely to happen. >> i guess where i was going was, you have 52 congressmen congressional districts in color 49 and they have reformed their system and you have districts there now who had republican versus republican and you had at least one fistfight. but it's forcing them to the center. of it seem like it's doing what you are taught in about. >> yeah, i do think that though

some people appointed to the california example of proving that this is a flawed means of reform, it still strikes me as a palatable reform. >> compared to what, right? hey mr. rich, how are you? >> we here lately that the tea party has peaked and this may be starting to decline. do you see any evidence to support this claim or is it just wishful thinking? >> wishful thinking. i have heard like every month and a half or so there is a new sort of mini-movement amongst largely conservative opinion leaders. they start writing stories and some democrats that the most recent evidence was if mitt romney wins it will be because he moved towards the center but no, i don't think the tea party movement has ever been a hard right nation.

the republican party is tilted right and i think if romney beats obama then it will be because he won a lot of dependent -- independent voters who move from party to party and election to election. the tea party movement is not here to stay but it at least entered the bloodstream. despite the voting behavior of congress. you see for example the ryan budget and both in 2011 in 2012 when it came up for a boat, all of these republicans who previously voted against it, now vote for it. if they failed them before they will be primary by someone who gets to the right and in fact one of people i read about in the book is a moderate republican named emerson from missouri. she voted against a couple of things and the voting behavior was not right-wing.

so that sort of behavior strikes fears in the hearts of a lot of legislators. >> infective governor romney loses the response from the tea party will be i told you so. [inaudible] >> do you see the same level of gridlock and what do you see coming down the line? >> bias in the idea that there are a lot of unfilled vacancies and how this new congress or for that matter the current congress will react? >> my book is about the house. the problem is the different issue that has to do with the ability of the particular senator tube block a particular federal appointment due to the rules of the senate. there have been moves always to reform that but the party in power tends to go against those movements so i don't see there being any change in that anytime

soon. >> the reality is we may have exactly the same situation congress regardless of the outcome of the presidency. republican majority house and democratic majority in the senate so it could very well happen next time. >> well party said the tea party types did not like t.a.r.p. but the quasi-apocalyptic moment in the too big to fail was when hank paulsen said if this doesn't pass there will be no economy on monday. do you think with romney or obama if another such moment occurs the tea party would listen to people like that and still send the economy down the drain? >> the moment that i memorialized my book during the debt ceiling standout that i think is illustrative, we have the thinking of the more conservative plank of the republican party and it was the house leadership, boehner,

cantor etc. and i'm asking your question in a general way because i can't speak specifically to the future. they were concerned. they believed that risking the credit of the united states would be a dangerous proposition. they believe default would be a terrible thing for this country. a lot of their fellow members did not believe that, they brought in this treasury undersecretary jay powell who serve for the herbert walker bush administration. what would happen if wanaque's second came and when the debt ceiling was not raised and he gave a powerpoint presentation of when social security checks would go through, how immediately federal prisons would close and as such and such a point veterans benefits would be cut off. it was very compelling evidence that this would be really calamitous and yet there were

some republicans who stood up and house republicans during the end of it and said it's outrageous that you are talking about this instead of washington's reckless spending habits. another guy stood up and said karl rove spoke to us this morning and he has written an article in "the wall street journal" saying this is obama's problem. you seem like a nice guy but i like it better than yours. they were unwilling to listen. as a tea party freshman she said i have tea party constituents. can you explain to me what this is about? this guy said well, the thing is we have been reckless and are spending and if there are consequences then so be it. emerson went home to her husband and said pour me a very big glass of fine. i can't believe i just had a meeting with a guy who's going to be congressmen. [laughter] >> although that would be a

perfect choice to end, we have one last question before we wrap it up. >> given 90 but a lot of these meetings, town halls and community meetings, are you hearing more or have you always heard people say, if you just do this, just to this meaning that there is a correlation between doing something and in end result whereas the nutty other factors are being considered? what we believe can result from taking action in the past? >> the town halls that i went to were republican town halls and overwhelmingly the sentiment and a lot of these towns ,-com,-com ma town hall meetings was a feeling of distrust towards washington, that the republicans lost control and the feeling that washington has not been acting in their best interest and some of this is part of a

psyche that began in september september 11 and a feeling of vulnerability that has persisted on several flanks since then. what i have not heard is often discussions of you know, if we pass this measure will that help? and you have to remember also that washington really believes in zero-sum politics. it's not an original thought of mine to say this but have been disillusioned nonetheless to cover that the leadership on both sides has been how do we gain and maintain power? a lot of these discussions have been about you know, how the republicans rollback the obama administration to make it weak and ultimately overtake it and how they maintain that power once it got it. a lot of it is cloaked in the argument of what is good for america but there's not a whole lot of policy prescription in

there. >> robert thank you. very good to see you and enjoy so much talking to you. robert draper. please buy his book. thank you very much. [applause] >> you don't always find many newspaper editors in any era embracing investigative reporting but the point we have seen over the years is it's not just economics, it's come for that investigator reported causes in the newsroom. it's troublesome. is that more than the economics. if you're going to ruffle the feathers of somebody powerful that gets those people running into complaint to the publisher and their stories are legion over the years about those events happening. and i were fortunate to the 70's and almost all of our careers to

work for people who are really strong and upright in that area and just let the chips fall made -- where they may and where the work led you. >> booktv attended about hardy for the publication of "shooting from the lip," the life of senator al simpson written by senator and former press secretary and chief of staff donald hardy. former vice president dick cheney, lynne cheney and supreme court plans thomas were in attendance. it's about 45 minutes.

>> hi. we are coming to you. we are here to celebrate your book. hi. >> you met don. >> oh man, for six years. >> jim billington and justice thomas.

>> hello senator, how are you doing? >> hello. how are you doing? >> good, good. i haven't got my good shoes on but i'm here. there was a big delay. >> that's very important. >> anyway, you are here. >> i wouldn't miss it. >> you look great. you picked up a little extra down there and we get our 20%. there is ann. >> hello, ann. >> has my wife arrived at? >> i don't believe so. coming with your chariot, what she? >> this is good to be immortalized. >> immortalize? >> can i say hi. my name is don hardy. >> he is the author of the book. >> oh, how are you?

you are so modest. >> here you go. >> the troublemakers out. thanks for being here. >> so they wrote a book about you? it has to be about eight volumes. [laughter] you know annie, you know jenny, jenny thomas. clarence. and you know jim billington of horse. >> this is just a great party. >> jimmy. jimmy, clarence thomas. >> it's good seeing you. >> elizabeth, you did it.

he would would have been please. he was my favorite. >> i love it. >> he didn't want any part of this. we loved your christmas card. you didn't have to do that to wyoming. to go to delare man pick on us. >> we made it to deadwood. >> did you go to the wyoming game in laramie? >> no, no. did you go over? >> no, i didn't get down to it either. here we go. okay ,-com,-com ma my god, call the cops. this is bizarre. annie, how are you?

>> it's good to see you, sir. how are you? >> you are the doctor, aren't you? >> i am the doctor. hey, nina. >> how are you? it's good to see you. >> the having gotten me but i'm 80. >> that is what david said to me. >> how is david? >> he is good. i just said hi to norm. >> up the japanese relocation, he was behind barbed wire. he will never forget when he took me.

>> we were definitely ahead. >> i didn't know. >> i didn't no. >> you didn't? >> no i didn't know. >> where is ann? there she is, she is talking with elizabeth dole. the white-haired lady with the gray jacket. how about your dad? >> he is 101 and still trucking. >> al abrams says hello. we used to give him fits. >> he was claiming he was in simpson. >> do you remember him? tell al, give them the usual greeting. >> i will l., i will do that.

who was that? >> some phantom, secretary of transportation he had a long-standing relationship with. >> anyway you are doing a good job. >> i have this little gas tax bill though that i'm starting out minimally. i'm not giving -- getting any support, even minimally. i bet on all my arguments and i have people worrying about it now. they won't raise taxes because grover said no. >> when coburn takes off 6 billion on ethanol and grover calls it a tax increase, i called him. >> tom is helping on this.

i'm gaining ground. >> is she well? and to listen there. sam donaldson said he would. >> would you mind holding this book for her one of our member's? >> i didn't write this book. i don't get any money out of this. the money goes to the author. i don't get any. no, it's true. >> thank you so much, sir. thank you so much. >> you are welcome. yours get special care. >> hello, senator. i used to work with michael toner at center thurmond's office in the 80's and this is my husband. we are big fans of yours. >> i needed in my line of work.

>> you are sweetheart. it's so nice to see you and i can't wait to read this. a. >> it's a good book. i will personalize it. >> we are getting one for his mom and dad. thank you, senator. it's great to see you. >> it will just tear their heart out. >> you are been changed a bit. >> travis jordan. it's been a couple of years. i was a -- scholar back in 2006. there we go. >> he is something else so i'm working for senator in see still and he has written a couple of letters of recommendation. i appreciate all your work. >> mike is a terrific guy.

[inaudible] >> he still tells us that story. >> it's a true story. >> it's good seeing you. >> i will personalipersonali ze a. >> senator, hi how are you? i was press secretary on the house side when i got there in 1988. my boss though clinger, bill is doing great. i see him all the time and he gave me a list. he said if you want to know how i think, here's who you pay attention and yours was the first name on the senate list which only had a couple of names on it. he was the chairman of the board of trustees for eight years. >> i spoke to him. >> i had dinner with him about six weeks ago and he is doing great. >> he is not doing the

chautauqua any more. >> he says eight years is enough but he still has a home there and spends his summers there. thank you. really a pleasure to meet you. [laughter] >> i am still here is your bodyguard. >> who is that over there? the bodyguard. >> my editors told me to ask you one question. who are you going to support for the republican nominee? >> i am 80 years old and i voted for ike. all i can tell you is republicans have a beautiful ability to give each other the saliva test and then they lose and they complain for four years. >> i've got to remember that. >> that's exactly what they do. how do we get this? 20% of you voted for ross perot. >> you are.not answered my question. >> i told you he was not going to answer it.

>> i will have to say i just wrote a check yesterday for romney. >> for how much? >> it was for a thousand bucks. i could've done more but i don't get anything for this book. i have effectively off everyone in america with the co-chairmanship of this committee. we know we have succeeded so far because we have made everyone mad. erskine and i go all over this country and talk to 500,000 people. we get a standing ovation. people are thirsting for somebody to tell them what a trillion bucks is. >> what a why? >> what a trillion bucks isn't how you stabilize social security. how you do something with medicare which is being a hole through the entire --

call it obamacare, college elvis presley care. it does not work for this presidency. >> how are you? it's good to see you. >> good to see you. we enjoyed a little bit of cody coming to d.c.. >> who are these people? >> all your fans. >> it is bizarre. >> you have to change that. a second printing. you cover jokes for them, right? >> oh, wonderful. we got a couple of copies. >> i read it is approved reader first and reading it as a reader -- >> it's a lot more fun.

>> wonderful. will we see some of your brood in her? excellent, excellent. >> you didn't have to. >> are you kidding me? >> you didn't have to do this. get in here. >> you are so dear to come to this. >> he loves you. >> i would kiss him on the head right now. >> this man loves you. >> here is a great guy. the other faith and ways to do a hell of a lot of business. >> i really miss you, al. >> i miss you too. >> he doesn't want to go to anything and he saw that and he said that bride have to go to an event. >> i was working my way out but i didn't get there. ann is here. there she is right over there. a lot of people voted for her.

how are you doing? >> i am doing so well i can't stand myself. i have everything. well, almost everything, senator. [laughter] you may forget that you arrange for my wife had died to get married in the howard baker room >> everything is working well? >> we are still together. >> i mean the mbm. there is nothing like it. >> see eucom a thank you so much. >> how are you? are you still doing your stuff? >> getting as much trouble as i can. i am freelancing and working on my own book. >> what do you writing about? >> my dad. he died at 100. >> well, that is it vote.

>> i saw the church down the street. >> st. johns. >> see eucom a honey. >> ann is over there. >> oh my god. you are related to the queen, aren't you? oh my god. i am in the presence of royalty. >> i know who it is. it's david. it's david brinkley come back from the dead. >> i am buying five hooks. how much are they? >> i don't know, i didn't write it. i don't get any money. >> what the hell are we doing here? >> don hardy. >> hello, don.

>> i just said that to tammy, we had a great time. >> ann? annie, right here. sam and jan want to get a picture. there she is. >> i am here because of you. >> everybody look right here. >> you wanted to raise my taxes. >> you didn't have to do that. >> he wanted to raise taxes and raise revenue in this country. >> in body.

>> the author and his wife. don and becky and they have been six years on this baby. >> i am surprise they finished it in such a quicktime, the way you are, you old coot. >> go ahead intel c-span whatever you would like. >> these are pals of mine. >> how are you? >> your book will give special attention. >> we have already bought it, but i told them that i wanted you to write something. [inaudible conversations] >> we ought to have a pilot looks. i can do it tomorrow some time.

stack them all. buffalo bills great-granddaughter. >> we wanted to find out where the book was. >> linda, my god. you old rascal. how good of you to come. >> i really asked your wife to sign the book as i set out that she did most of it. >> tomorrow between all of my -- i did not write it. i'm not the author. >> i forgot about that. it's not why you. >> i did not write it.

anyway, anyway i want to add special notes to this. >> does that mean we will never get it back? >> you will get it back. is that my hairpiece? [laughter] >> the one you lost 45 years ago. >> anyway, he doesn't go to any of them. i love the guy. >> he wouldn't come except for you. a lot of us would not come out in this rain. >> i will even hide the book. [inaudible conversations]

[laughter] >> julie. >> how are you? good to see you. how if web you been? >> i've been well. how about you? >> here i am. >> it's so good to see you. ..

>> can i get a picture with you, to require? is one of those roaming errors. it's a brand-new day. okay, get in here. don hardy. >> this is one of my students. this is one of my finest students. he is of the face. >> i'm in the white house now. [inaudible]

[inaudible conversations] >> that's how project sessions start. >> it's you, margaret. >> it's me, margaret. [inaudible] >> wow. >> his mother was judge alice k. birdie, big democrat with 13 children. i voice, for gross. >> i wish i could've been your author. >> used to take the whole staff over.

>> my goodness. >> we are all here. >> you remember my wife, sir. >> good to see you off. [inaudible conversations] >> how are you doing? >> they have a copy yet. >> we were together at treasury, so they get together every once in a while and trade stories. [inaudible] >> the guy with the radio.

[laughter] >> they don't know your voice. [inaudible] >> there could be a couple. >> you must be rambling theories. the mac we are coming out west again. we're coming to yellowstone around july 4th. >> let us know. give us notice. a lot of people, sometimes i look at the driveway and then i go into the basement and the doorbell rings. this is anybody in there? .mac >> i have a camping out in the garage with a tent in the car which i thought and i think jesus, not that guy.

[laughter] so if you see me do that -- >> than we know. you can't do it with us. >> my father was the attorney general and arizona. we cannot wait to read your book. [inaudible conversations] >> i haven't seen him for a while. >> thank you for rally over. we need people like u.s. congress. >> nice to have a fan. >> thank you. it's great to see you.

>> you'd like to get out of here, wouldn't you? [inaudible conversations] am telling you, this is awesome, isn't it? >> great gathering. [inaudible] >> easier. we ran the same manner. let's get it going. [applause] >> good evening, everyone. i didn't hear you? hi, everyone. i am tammy haddad and i'm thrilled to welcome you to this special evening for a very good friend of all of ours and every facet we are at this fabulous hotel, the jabber sin. it's like to introduce you to peter grossman, one of our

cohost. we'll come and say hello? [applause] >> thank you. very briefly on behalf of connie and the jefferson. i hope that's better. we're absolutely thrilled to be hosting senator simpson and his former chief of staff chief of staff and biographer, donald hardy this evening. we are excited here both of them about the book, "shooting from the lip," which i guess is fading. connie was also very proud last year to proud last year to host a dinner on behalf of the commission and to further support it and its effort as everybody knows on the deficit reduction. i'm not sure that anybody really listened, at least they put in the effort. that's apolitical, by the way. so in addition, connie noted it was no surprise to her at the

time that based on senator simpson's record in the senate and his bipartisanship work, that he would be chasing to be a cochair of the commission. lastly, i just want to say as we understand, mr. hardy had full access to senator simpson's records, diaries, finance, full access. i will say the senator did mention he's been married 57 years, so anybody that gives full access after 57 years, i think that's pretty impressive. but connie just really wanted to welcome everybody and say we are thrilled to be sponsoring this. [applause] >> nowcome i had the pleasure of introducing what i call the bravest man in the world, dawn hardy, author of the book. i don't you could possibly put all this in one book and decide what to leave in and what to

take out at a 70s had senator simpson on msnbc cometh and then ann fox, you change the conversation about politics, culture, what is important in our country. and dawn had to put all that and how many pages? >> 460. >> for 60. >> ladies and gentlemen, don hardy. [applause] >> what a treat this case. al told me if i ever got in front of a crowd like this is a sit in the shadows that should be careful what i say because one day you're the toast of the town and the next day church is toast. [laughter] so thank you all. thank you, peter and kent levinson is an amazing guy. [applause] i met him when he worked with haley bailey 18 years ago in china.

he was a great divan. he's a great guy now. i hope you're good to meet him. it hadn't been for him, we wouldn't be here tonight. so, and jackie, wherever she is. they are. without her the invitation list would have been a mess. i have no alan simpson for just over 40 years. i heard of the story sophisticated than i try to do them myself. and he helped me out of that hole. i worked 18 years. as press secretary in chief chief of staff responsible for all mistakes. [laughter] wayne al went to retire and went to harvard, i went to the smithsonian and was in charge of government for a wild man. my wonderful wife, rebecca who is right here. i'm telling you i could not have done this book without you.

she did with research and out of me being up at 4:00 in the morning and she is amazing. so we went overseas and did a bunch of work with charities and children and blind people and lepers and came back and ended up on a sailboat in one day in 2005, the phone connected for some reason to some island power in your brain and it was all since then. he said these guys want to write the story of my life and they don't know me as well as you do. would you like to take a shot at it quite a nice night, because it is a life, i said just a second, i'm having trouble getting the court out of this bottle of chardonnay. but i did. i said why would they do that? because i would give you access to everything in my life, everything. i thought i knew a lot, but all of his records, papers,

speeches, personal letters from family members was all there. everything i could possibly want and especially the diaries. 6000 pages. 19 vendors and people like david mccullough said the reason these are valuable if they were put down as they have been. darius at the white house talking the gorbachev or saddam hussein and he took notes and then he did t. it it into this diary that ended up being 2.4 million words. [laughter] so we set sail for the united states and outside, how long is this going to take? i said about a year. that was in 2005. [laughter] do something that's really important, people worked for you and i was loyal to you if you've

been my friend for half a century. they're going to expect this thing and it's very important that they not think that after they read it. sue is that it's important that i tell the bad things in the failures in balance along with all the successes. and al said look, just do the right thing by telling the truth. he said if hair, eyeballs and teeth land on the floor as a result of telling the truth about me, so be it. [laughter] i also said that i have to have editorial control. if you write anything in this book, people are not going to tank -- also you can't have any money. [laughter] and so, i hold the contrary to what the eucharist of oklahoma

press. the al said say what you want, but make it true. so i did. the first two pages describe what it's like to push a flaming car of the class and burned down a house and shoot enough mailboxes to end up on federal probation. the reason on this important is that -- [inaudible] >> it is important is this is not a story about politics. half of you have probably written stories about politics. others are coming to say or come against us, doesn't it pass, people afflicted out in the cloak room, whatever. this is about humanity, human and purity happen to be a politician. this is a person who is extremely human, put citizenship ahead of partisanship and that's what he was important to tell the story. it goes back to the days in which republicans and democrats spoke to each other and respect each other.

it doesn't happen as much anymore, but for example, al simpson was a great friend of ted kennedy. they spoke very fate into his life. people didn't know that they didn't understand it, and wyoming, especially. [laughter] silly little story you have to tell you the kind of demonstrates the case in which there is friendship because either one of these guys could tell the same exact story. it involves a town meeting and wyoming, where people come in and raise their hands and they are upset about something. this meeting is going on in alice presiding over it and in the door comes ted kennedy and people can't believe it. this is with this guy doing in wyoming? another guy stands up and says that ted kennedy here and wyoming. back i is a horse's eyes.

since then jumps up governments to the back of the room, threw them into the snow bank the money comes back end, kennedy sister had, good heavens, that is magnificent, al. i had no idea this is kennedy country. [laughter] elect adam and said it's not. it's horse country. [laughter] [applause] senator al simpson. >> well, this is beyond repair here. several people have come up to me and said al, let them tell you story i say go ahead, i'm wired. all save it for later. anyway, if i started around this room, there's some wonderful people here and i'm not going to do that. haven't had a drink, will a

little later. but i have to say, don hardy to this over and what he really forgot to say was when he was 17, he borrowed a car, i think of as a rental from western chevrolet intro to seattle. it is not a rental. it is called stolen. he came to me and said i heard you were a mess. what about me? i said your mass, sosa, and air. you're very salvageable human being. [laughter] , so we were linked at the head way back they are. that feature story. but he had done a beautiful job. it's a great vote. i read it as a proofreader three times, thinking i found this and that and i dig them up and then i read it as a reader would read the book and i had to bump in my throat and laughed throughout. so if they are and it's a

beautiful book and i love it. things could have been left out. [laughter] i mean, today i slept the cop in laramie, threw in the clink, called anne. anne is here. [applause] i don't have 300 bucks. she said just stay there. i thought i need to marry her. saving myself for the primrose path. in this room is another great and dear friend, lynn and dick cheney. and i want say about dick cheney cheney's experiences, especially at the university of wyoming, which would make my pale. [laughter] i tell you, we ran together in 1878. he ran for the congress, i ran for the senate and land and dick

cheney and i and neither of us ever lost an election good so that's a tribute to you. [applause] and back they are standing right next to him as the little rascal mat behind barbed wire. he was in the japanese war relocation center in heart mountain, wyoming is a 12-year-old boy and our scoutmasters said we're going to go to heart mountain and meet the boy scouts. i'll tell you, nobody wanted to go. it had wire all around it, card covers, machine guns and it was one of those relocation centers. it is scoutmasters. they said these are curvaceous like us, boy scouts. i ran into this guy, san jose. he was a smart aleck, just like i was. and we had a bully. he picked on us, so we just dug a little trench right towards

his cabin. during the night it rained, ruined his hands full today. he said i laughed more than he did. but that's a friendship. [inaudible] >> what's that? [inaudible] >> when he was mayor said remember the fat kid from cody. research at other congress come on the board of regents of the smithsonian. these are great memories, but land and, that goes back 40 some years. i could go back to nina totenberg and this chamber. she and i have had since bearded birds. and let me tell you, she and dave kim and i was at harvard he agreed the most wonderful times together. her father still playing violin and we had a lot of fun. i always -- if you can't forgive

a person, it's like letting them live in your head rent free. that's not a funny statement. if you can't forgive a person, it is like letting band live in your head rent free. i mean, you are in the shower thinking that son of a and he's golfing. [laughter] so what do you gain from that? [laughter] and then ellington is lurking over here. clarence thomas is here. amazing things to go through. i say to people, why don't you move on? what is the purpose of keeping tabs feed name? there at this theater is in the seekers. i prefer the seekers. anyway, ellington is up for library of congress. there's another guy affair, a real wizard. and reagan's staff wanted that guy. so i'm sitting next to ronald

reagan. by really about the guy. i'm in his diary a lot of tell you. i said i think you want to think of this guy, billington. he said why would that be? i said he hates commies. [laughter] and i said not only that, he knows russian fluently. he can tell just exactly what they're saying. he said really? three days later -- [laughter] [applause] great story. and a john dingell, where's that rascal? pni -- i know, but i can't stop. [laughter] but dingell and i used them in a conference committee said he would say, look, we are going to get this done and i said who are you going to before the 10 days

is over? he named a guy. he said what i should do something with the staff of the committee in the senate? is that i can't come if they are tougher than i am. but then we got together and beat them two days. chuck robb and i were on the iraq study group. both have been? the word compromise now means you are a wimp. that's madness. you can't do it. bruce reid, executive director of the commission cochaired by erskine and i from idaho. i don't know how he got into that. i'm not going to go any further. i see corey logan took it over there, one of my students as however. now anne has cleared her throat three times. and if you have heard it, but i've heard it. stick around because the test of an event like this, i go up and say how's the wind? better than anything you ever

bought. [laughter] said now that i'm finished i'll be having one. but there's something, if you have a book, i don't just want to scribble my name. you can get this out there. if you want me to do some personalization, just put a slip of paper in their and eventually i will get them back or they will be here in washington with mike, me dear pal, chief of staff. where is the? anyway, mike lately, you are the finest i've ever known. you wear your crown and have been, certainly here. [laughter] becky -- all right, this is like the picture of dorian gray. [laughter] i am falling apart in this

picture is eternal. dorian gray was a picture aged and he never did. he sold his soul and ended up in a pile of dollars in a cadaverous u.s. but that is a beautiful thing. anyway, to think that i do these things, just one reason, this wonderful guy right here. and i've never received a penny. [applause] thank you for coming. stick around. [inaudible] [applause] >> you don't always find many newspaper editors of any era embracing investigative reporting. the plaintiffs in over the years is not just economics. it's the discomfort it often causes in a newsroom. because of his troublesome good

is that more than economics. if you ruffle the feathers of someone powerful, that gets people running in to complain to publisher and their stories there the chin over the chin over the years about those things happening. we're fortunate to 70s and almost all of our careers to work for people who were really strong enough pride in that area and let the chips fall where they may. >> from the 12th annual national book festival on the national mall in washington d.c., congressman john lewis presents his book, "across that bridge." this is about 45 minutes.

[applause] >> thank you so much. david, thank you for those kind words of introduction. mr. librarian, thank you for your leadership. thank you for your vision. thank you for never, ever giving up for never giving and create thank you for keeping the faith. i am so delighted and so pleased to be here this afternoon, to see each and every one of you. now you heard that i didn't grow up in a big city like washington d.c. or baltimore or silver spring's or brockville, alexander or atlanta. i grew up on a farm in rural alabama about 50 miles from montgomery. outside of the little place

called troy. my father was a sharecropper and farmer. back in 1844 when i was solely for your souls, my father had saved $300 that the $300 he got a one acre land. and on this pharmacy lot of card and coin, tenets, callous and chickens. on the farm that was my responsibility to care for the chickens. then i fell in love bracing chickens like no one else could raise chickens. can i sue the hands of those who know how to raise chickens? let's have a little fun here this afternoon. [inaudible] placed him under the second handedly for three long weeks for the little chicks to hatch. some of you may be saying john lewis, how are you able to do so

emplace them from time to time another hand would get on the same nest and there would be some more eggs. good to carry fresh eggs from the eggs. do you follow me? you don't follow me. it's okay. it's all right. the check was hatched. we take these chicks and put them in a box with a lantern can erase them on their own and give them to another hand and get some more fresh eggs and mark them with a pencil for another three weeks. i look back on it, it was not the right thing to do. it is not the moral thing to do in the most loving thing to do in the most nonviolent thing to do to keep i'm cheating on their hands. some of you may be old enough to remember, especially in the midwest and in the south we used

to get the catalog. earning you old enough to remember quite funny see the hands of those. very good. that datebook, that heavy book, some people called it a wish for. i wish i had this, i wish i had that. i was never quite able to save $18.98 to order the most inexpensive hatcher incubator, so they just kept on cheating. about eight or nine years old, i wanted to be administered. i wanted to preach the gospel. so from time to time to help my brothers and sisters are first cousins, would get all this chickens together. like you were here under this large pan and we would have church. my brothers and sisters and

first cousin might be a state-of-the-art, but to make up the congregation along with the chicken. i would start preaching eminem but a chronic, some of those chickens would shake their heads. they never quite said a man. but i am convinced that some of those chickens i preached in the 40s and 50s senate to this intimate much better than some of my colleagues listen to me today in the congress. [applause] as a matter of fact, some of those chickens. little more productive. [laughter] at least they produced eggs. that's enough about that story. but one thing those chickens did atopic patients. they taught me to wait them back in a hurry. just wait, and be patient.

the eggs are not hatch in three days. it would take three long weeks for those eggs to hatch. the civil rights movement taught me patience. never give up, never to give in, to never give up, but to always keep your eyes on the prize. so across the bridge is about patients, about how, truth, love and reconciliation. now when i was growing up in rural alabama and was visiting a town of troy, visiting montgomery, visited tuskegee and later as a student in nashville, tennessee and made a living in

atlanta. i saw the sign said white men, colored women, colored rating, white waiting. as a child my mother, father, grandparents said that's the way it is. don't get in the way, don't get in trouble. but in 1855 at the age of 15, i heard of rosa parks. i heard of martin luther king junior. in 1957 at the age of 17 i never said parks. the next year at the age of 18, i meant to her martin luther king junior. the action of rosa parks, people in my camera and leadership of dr. king inspired me to get in the way, to get in trouble. for more than 50 years have been getting in trouble, good chabot, necessary travel. [applause] so across that bridge is really

a lesson about getting in chabot, good trouble. and that's when i think in america today we need more people to get in trouble, big trouble. if you believe in something that is so right, so dear, so necessary, you have to get in trouble. but before we got in any trouble as students come is to people, we studied. we just did make up one morning and say were going to go sit in. we didn't just dream one day they would come to washington and god the freedom ride or route march on washington as he did in 1863, there were going to march to mark them as they did in 1865. we studied are we prepared ourselves as college students,

and the city of nashville. every tuesday night, a group of us have made it 6:30 p.m. were we attempted to do in south africa. what did you accomplish in india? pursued the rule of civil disobedience. we studied the great religions of the world. we studied for.her martin luther king junior was all about and we were ready and we would be sitting in her standing in at a theater or going on a freedom ride and we would be beaten, we would be jailed. but we didn't strike back. we had it as a way of living, in way of life, that it's better to love into hate. we wanted to build a community.

we wanted to be reconciled. so this book is also about reconciliation. to give you one example, i first came to washington d.c. they first come in 1861 to go on something called a freedom ride. 18 of us, seven right and six african-americans came here may 1st. we participated in nonviolent workshops and i will never forget him the night of may 3rd, someplace in downtown washington, we went to a chinese restaurant. growing up in rural alabama, going to school in nashville i'd never been to a chinese restaurant before. never had a meal at a chinese restaurant. but at night we had a wonderful meal. food was good and someone said, you should eat while because

this may be like the last supper. the next dan may 4, 1961, we left washington, traveled from here on our way to new orleans. the first incident occurred in charlotte, north carolina. back in 1861, but he floodway people couldn't be seated together on a greyhound bus. could you share the same weight room come the same restroom facilities. segregation was the order of the day. the charlotte, north carolina in may 1961, young african-american man entered the so-called white waiting room. he went into the waiting room and later into the barbershop and tried to get shoeshine. he was arrested and taken to jail. the next day, went to trial in

the jury dismissed the charges against him. on that same afternoon, a young white gentleman by the name of avid hello, wonderful man from connecticut. the two of us try to entry so-called white waiting room. we were met by a group of young men who beat us the leftist lane in a pool of blood. a local authorities came up and wanted to know whether we wanted to press charges. we said no, we believe in peace and love and nonviolence. that was may 9, 1961. in february on nine, less than a month after president barack obama had been inoculated as president, one of the young men that had attacked us came to my

congressional office on capitol hill and said mr. lewis, i'm one of the people that beat you, will you forgive me? i want to apologize. he had been encouraging his father to go and seek out people he had attacked. i said yes, i accept your apology. i forgive you. his son started crying, he started crying, i started crying. he gave me a hug. i hugged him back. since then i've seen this documentary of their times. he calls a brother and i call him brother. that's what the movement was all about. but this book is about reconciliation. it is one people, one family, one house, that we must be reconciled, that those of us who live in america, those of us who

live on this piece of real estate must learn to live together as brothers and sisters as stuck to king suggested. the late randall, who was the dean of the civil rights movement, tina black leadership, who had the whole idea about the march on washington almost 50 years ago would say from time to time, maybe our forefathers and forefathers all came to this great land in different shapes. but we're all in the same boat now. so it doesn't matter whether we are black were way, latino, and asian american or native american. it doesn't matter whether were democrats or republicans. it doesn't matter whether we are straight or. it doesn't matter whether we are jewish or muslim or christian's,

we are one people, one family. we are one house. [applause] this book, "across that bridge" says and affected a struggle is not a struggle to begin the soul of america. it's not a struggle that last one day, one week, one month, one year or one lifetime. maybe we take more than one lifetime to create a more perfect union. to create the beloved community, the community at peace with itself. now, you heard david tell you that it did get arrested a few times and young people, young children, then say, how can you be in a congress? who got arrested?

you violated the laws. and i said, they were proud laws. their customs, they were tradition and we wanted america to be better. we wanted america to live it to the declaration of independence, live up to or create them make real our democracy. take it off of people and make it real. so when i got arrested the first time, i felt free. i felt liberated and today more than ever before, i feel free and liberated. you know, abraham lincoln 150 years ago freed the slaves. but it took the modern-day civil rights movement to free and liberate a nation. [applause] now i know some of you are

asking, where did you get the name "across that bridge"? where did you get the title from? life lessons and a vision for change. take a few short years ago that this is an election year. hundreds of dozens of million people from virginia to texas. could not register to the based on the color of their skin. people stood in line. we take a state like the state of mississippi in 1963, 1964, 1965 and the voting age population more than 450,000, but only 16,000 were registered to vote. as one county mandated state of alabama in the heart of the plot of paid my population was with an 80%, but that is not a single

registered black voters in the county. in the littletown selma, alabama, only 2.1% of blacks of voting age were registered to vote. people were beaten, people were jailed. on one occasion a man was fast the numbers on a bar so. another occasion a manned was asked to count the number of jelly beans in a jar. there were african american lawyers, teachers and doctors, college professors failing the so-called tests. we had to change that. hundreds and hundreds of people had been arrested and jailed. in 1964, my old organization is a nonviolent coordinating committee, better known to organize something called the

mississippi summer project. [applause] thank you. some of you remember. for more than a thousand students, black and white college students came south at work. december 9th and june 21st, 1964, 3 young men that i knew, two young white men and one young african-american, james shaman went out to investigate the burning of an african-american church. they would stop, arrested, taken to jail and later that same evening they were taken from jail, turned over to the claim, beaten, shot and killed. i took the all the time that these three young men didn't die in vietnam.

they didn't die in the middle east. they didn't die in eastern europe. they didn't die in africa or south america. they died right here in our own country trying to get all of our people to become participants in a democratic process. and bright now, there is an attempt on the part of several members of the congress, both democrats and republicans to get the posters service to issue a stamp in honor of these three young men. [applause] so we had to organize. we had to mobilize. we had to speak a period we had to speak out. we had to get in trouble, big trouble, necessary trouble. dr. martin luther king junior received a nobel peace prize in december 1964 after president

johnson signed the civil rights act in july 1964. dr. curt king had a mini with the president and told him he needed a voting rights act. and president lyndon johnson told dr. king in so many words, we had to get a voting rights back. i just signed the civil rights act. dr. martin luther king jr. came back to atlanta, but with a group of us. my organization was already involved in selma. the only time a person could even attempt to register to vote with the first and third mondays of each month. he had to go up a set of steps, three set of double doors and get a copy of the so-called literacy tests. very few people were able to pass the so-called tests.

two days, late february 1963 -- 1965, there is a protest in marion, alabama about 35 miles. marion, alabama but martin luther king jr. an incident occurred. a young man by the name of jimmy lee jackson tried to protect his mother, shot in the stomach by a state trooper in a few days later he died at a local hospital. because of what happened to have, we decided to march from selma to montgomery. so march 7, in 1865, about this time of day, 600 of us have participated in a non-pilot workshop. we ran up to a 50 miles and selma to montgomery, to

dramatize the nation and wrote the people of of color in alabama wanted to register to vote. during those days, i had all of my hair and a few pounds lighter. i was wearing a bat pack before it became fashionable to wear but tax. and they missed that part i had two books. i thought it was going to be arrested, go to jail, so wanted to have some thing to read. i had an apple and i had an orange. one apple and one orange. i wanted to do something to eat. i thought it was going to be in jail with my friends, my colleagues and neighbors. i wanted to be able to brush my teeth. as we were crossing the alabama river, my colleague walking beside me, a young man by the

name of josé williams said to me, john, can you swim? he saw all of this fire down below. if you know, who say. i said can you swim? he said yes a little. we continue to work, came to the highest point of the bridge. down below who sought alabama street troopers. we continued to walk. we came within distance of state troopers and a member of the state trooper identified himself inside a major john cloud of alabama state troopers. it's another to continue at 83 minutes to disperse and return to your church. and josé williams said, nature, give us a moment to kneel and pray. before we can tell the people that behind us the words to kneel and pray, the troopers had

, officers advance, troopers advance. these men put on the gas mask on the came towards us, and beating us with night sticks, and in releasing tear gas. it was hit by a state trooper within a state, had a concussion on the bridge. i thought i was going to die. i thought i saw death. 47 years later, i don't recall, i don't know how i made it back across that bridge, but i do remember that church, within two dozen people in the outside trying to get in to protest but it happened on the bridge. someone asked me to the audience and i sit up and said i don't understand it. sending troops to vietnam, can i send troops to alabama to

protect people whose only desire is to get registered to vote, to march from selma to montgomery. 17 of us were hurt and admitted to a local hospital. the next day dr. mark that the king junior came to visit with us. and he said, he asked her legislators to come. more than a thousand priests, rabbis, not ministers came and walked across that bridge, walked across that rage. crop so we made a lot of progress, but there's still other bridges ready to cross to create a more preferred unions, to create the community, but president lyndon johnson came through the congress on march 15

and made one of the most meaningful speeches that any american president had made in modern times on the whole question of civil rights and voting rights. we call it the we shall overcome speech. they started that speech by saying i speak tonight for democracy. he went on to say at times, history and faith in the search for freedom. some of them a century ago at lexington and concord appomattox , and selma, alabama. introduce the voting rights act and before he concluded the speech, he said, and we shall overcome. i've looked at dr. martin luther king jr. for this mission together in the

home of a local family in selma. i look to adopt her cane and he started crying. we'll started crying to the president of the united states using the new songs of the civil rights movements. and we shall overcome. there are other bridges to cross it we must cost them with faith, hope, love and peace and be reconciled with our brothers and sisters because we are one family. we are one house. we all live in the same house, the american house and continue to cross that bridge. thank you very much. [applause] >> this event was part of the 2012 national book festival in washington d.c. for more information, visit

loc.gov/fast. >> you don't always find as many newspaper editors had an air investigating embraced investigative reporting. it's not just economics. if the discomfort that investigative reporting often causes in a newsroom because his troubled son. it's that more than the economics. if you've ruffled the feathers of somebody powerful, that consisted of running in to complain to the publisher of the story so they should over the years about this kinds of things happening. donna and i were very fortunate to the 70s and almost all her career to work for people who were strong enough right in that area and that the chips fall where they may.

>> congressional scholars, thomas mann and ornstein contend that the level of hyper partisanship has resulted in a dysfunctional political process marked by adherence to political party platforms above all else. this is about an hour and a half. >> i think we're ready to begin. i am e.j. dionne come to senior your bookings. i moderated a panel spirit i would say the greatest insult ever directed to meet this from david brooks who said my eyes light up at the word panel discussion. it's not a powerful insight? the normally calm even when i have strong views, try to be fair and valid about things.

i just want to confess up front i am not fair and balanced here because of my feelings about norm and calm. norm in time of my two favorite people in the world and i cannot tell you how excited i am that they have become celebrities. but it is a great thing for them, a great thing for the republic and i'm honored to be here susan amici who have agreed to join this great discussion. what to begin by saying this event is being live webcast. attendees are encouraged to treat. even worse is where he should send your comments. books will be available for purchase an autographed at the conclusion of the event. is there any other announcements and intimate, we can go to straighten to the main event. tom mann is a senior fellow here

at brookings. he is the debut at april harriman chair, head of the government studies program. he got his ba in political science from the university of florida and m.a. and phd from the university of michigan. so he speaks for the heartland of our great country. >> the automobile industry. last night and he was stopping production of vx. the electors frequently, as solid and no satisfactory radio and television shows onto human kind. even norm has competed for the misquotations in any given year and multimedia. norm is a resident scholar at the american enterprise institute for public policy research. he writes a column for roll call. he's written for every publication on the face of the

earth. he and tom both have been on the news hour with jim lehrer, and "nightline" charlie rose. he has another heart and are coming ba, magna laude from university of minnesota and a phd from university of michigan, which is where you guys met. i just have to say that one of the reasons why i think tom and warm is so much attention the outlook piece is because they have been spending their entire lives being so moderate and reasonable that would make it not, there really must be something wrong. so why don't i go to tom and norm first and then i'll introduce susanne and mickey edwards. >> is a great honor to be your colleague. >> jay, thank you so much. suzanne and mickey, i appreciate your coming and all of you for participating in this event.

norm and i have been friends and colleagues and collaborators for over 40 years. i know it shows on me. it doesn't show one had. ..

before entering the witness protection program. [laughter] >> mabey we should have followed the full script of christian andersen and enlisted a child for the emperor wears clothes, but we were not smart enough to do that. actually, what i want to say is the response to the first ten days or less of commentary i've learned what it means to go viral. it was a very instructive lesson. but it's been very heartening. maybe 5% have ugly hate mail and another 5% constructive criticism and 90% thank you for saying this.

and a prominent among the scores of people who e-mail thus and were in the 90% of the self identified republicans, ordinary citizens and some elected officials and party activists as well and a fair number of reporters both of whom take a little heat from us in this and actually really are heartened by this. i think it is fair to say, too that we feel each passing day brings more reinforcement of the argument we make in this book. this of course was richard lugar's defeat yesterday in vienna, so not so much the fact that in the 80-year-old man that served, what, seven terms in the senate? six. was running for the seventh term

and lost but the election. these things happen that there was the nature of the case against him that he had collaborated with the enemy when the enemy was in the senate that would be barack obama that he voted for the supreme court justices nominated by obama that he supported president bush's tarp program. it really is quite telling to see how his opponent undermined him by saying that he's gone over to the dark side. it tells us a lot about the problematics about politics right now. then we have that incident on the campaign trail. i think you was yesterday when it in a town hall meeting setting a woman got up and

talked about the abuse of the constitution by the president and how he should be tried for treason. people make sharp statements. i remember john mccain reacting to a statement like that in 2008 and really just controlling the line and saying what kind of person mr. obama was. in this case, you know, mitt romney just passed it by. the sentiments are so strong you don't want to confront or engage that. he said when asked by a reporter leader is it true and he said no, of course not. third, the house republican budget committee is now proceeding to do two things. one is to insist on a lower overall discretionary spending.

then what is agreed to install all that came at the end of that dreadful process of holding the debt ceiling hostage. so, unilaterally declared that a cut and now as a way of avoiding this sequestration, the budget has proposed a remarkable set of additional cutbacks and means tested programs of one sort or another. i even saw the promise and most analytical reporters that david of politico shall his demotion of writing about that, and of course we have yesterday the successful republican filibuster on the senate democratic plan

for setting and extending the lower student loan rate. no surprise i noted in "new york times" this is the 21st successful republican filibuster in this converse. most of it is not consequential as the filibuster was in the first two years because there was a republican house in any case and the white house and the senate are not likely to be realized the the fact is that it's been so commonplace and he's taken for granted in most press reports the filibuster is never a will dated to the story itself because it is redeemed. it is a procedural motion that didn't get the 60 votes that they needed. it shows you how much the filibuster has become so

routine. listen, our argument is one, we have a mismatch, a serious mismatch between our political parties which are highly polarized, internal unified, hyper strategic in the pond to the contras that its parliamentary like that it's oppositional when they are out of government and out of the presidency but they are operating not in a parliamentary system where that kind of behavior can be quite useful and productive but in the separation of power system with 14 filibuster's and midterm elections and the possibility of the divided party government that frankly is such a mismatch that it doesn't happen now. the second point of the one that

has gotten the most attention is that the polarization that exists between the parties is not symmetric. >> there was one the party that has gone off the tracks that has become an insurgent that is more ideologically extreme that rejects several generations of economic and social policy stretching back as far as a century ago that the level of the individual republican fire doesn't have much use for fact is, for evidence, for science and perhaps most important of all that questions the legitimacy of the opposition party and the extent to which early americans. this is something, you know,

we've had individuals say, but never have said seemed to be expected by the leadership of one of our major parties. the third point that we make is in the interview never fix these things without the public stepping up and running in party is that have gone ms, but alas the complications of accountability in the system, number one, and number two, the way in which these events and our demands and the battles are portrayed to the public through not the partisan press, which has its own aspects, but through the mainstream press by respected some able, highly professional reporters that leads to a kind of balance, a false equivalents that they are

both implicated. that, we argue, has the effect of demobilizing and disarming in public that might otherwise be in a position to do something better. thank you. >> thank you very much, tom. and now we want term to norm. when i was first described to me, i said this book is just like that eric clapton album that was imitated many times. it was called norm unplugged. [laughter] >> thank you, e.j.. i want to start with a plug. this is the only book which should be capturing the attention of those that care about the public will system. e.j. has a book coming out that is margolis called our divided political heart. what is the subtitle? >> the battle for the american idea in an age of discontent. >> now you know why i love these

guys. i might have suggested a new subtitle. >> thank you. >> but please, by them both and they both make a great holiday gifts. >> mother's day is coming up, off father's day follows. you know he started by talking about the 40 plus year partnership that tom and i have had come and over that period of time we have tried three scrupulously to be fair minded and not take sides. we call them as we see them, but for me it has always been a point of pride that i can go and give a talk to people and some come up afterwards and say we couldn't tell from that what side you were on triet for 40 years we've done that and writing the book wasn't an easy thing to do because that is going to change. there are going to be some

people who see us, see me in particular as having taken sides. so i often get asked why did you do this and i fink fact is for both of us we spent 40 years building some capital and the imputation, and they're comes a point you feel like you need to use that because the stakes are too high, the consequences are great, and we both believe that we are at a really critical point in the system. we face huge problems in the country, short term and long term, and if we are going to reach the system of problem solvers and end up with people who say things like richard murdock, the new republican nominee for the senate in indiana said yesterday, which is my idea of compromise is when they move to accept my position. if that is how we are going to be faced with making policy decisions that are going to be very tough and painful but for

americans, if all major changes in the social policy whether they expand government or contract the government, the disrupt people's lives almost by definition and you cannot make that work and create a sense of legitimacy in the system where people face short-term pain. for the promise that it will improve their lives or the lives of their children in the future. if we get rid of people like richard lugar in this process and the merge with people who have a very different perspective. the fact that we have gone through a number of years we have been moving in that direction and that people are not held accountable, there hasn't been a price to pay for obstruction, for hostage-taking and a lot of other bad behavior in politics motivated us not just to write this book but also to take on a press corps that we

think to a much greater degree than it should has fallen back into a comfortable position of saying we report both sides. part of this is because we have seen the emergence over the last 20 years of the fairly substantial and effective lobbies on both sides that may have started with accuracy in media and move to share. journalists like most of us don't like criticism that may be more of the most of us don't like criticism and in particular the mainstream press that has for many years been hit with the idea that it's a liberal press to be hit hard from the right with the idea that you are tilting in that direction brings out a desire to overbalancing and in this case it is an over balance where the balance becomes as we have heard from many reporters our obligation is to report both sides of the story. and my response to that is all

right, so if you have a hit and run driver, do you say that when he comes up and says it's his fault if he has equivalence with the victim and that is and the journalism, it is to report the truth and in this case, we have decided to report what we believe is the truth right now and that reflects not a briefing for one party. i have no desire to carry water for the democratic party. and i have no desire to simply turn the republicans into a version of the democratic party. we need vibrant parties that have different centers of gravity and that compete with a lot of vigor and bumping heads together but also have an understanding of the nature of our political process is different from the parliamentary system. it is a system where if you are going to reach a level where people in this extended republic

accept those decisions that are made, you have to find some broad bipartisan leadership consensus coming and that means collaboration. it doesn't mean here's what we are going to do and if you want to come to us, that's fine. if you don't, screwed you. it doesn't mean we are going to obstruct because that's the way to get ahead even siblings damage to the country along the way. we have to shed some blood during the course of a resolution to be the means something different. our political and heroes include people like barbara, called to whom we'd indicated a lot with pat moynihan in the book several years ago the broken branch and includes people like lugar. it includes people that have been very strong conservatives. if you read his statement after his defeat which reflected some considerable degree of bitterness but also as a jury eloquent statement about what we need in our political process and this is a statement coming from a guy that said i your

everyday moderate. in fact he said people often said during the course of this campaign but don't you just become an independent and he supplied a republican, i've always been one and i will be one that i believe in the values of small government, less taxes and all the things i reflect what conservatism was and presumably ought to be and jack said partly today in reaction to the defeat if we continue to move towards purity we will move to the relevancy, and along the way, the country and effect is going to go down the tubes and to the clarion calls from people like chuck hagel and alan simpson and lugar and jack danforth, not just from us, that ought to shake people up about where we are and where we were going and what we hope would

have been with a degree of penetration that astounded us from the "washington post" piece before the book was all the credibility that we had built up it wasn't just a couple people coming from one end of the spin from but saying it's all the fault of people at the every end this is the case of a system that is grown and dysfunction as one party has become as we say and insertion of life here and it becomes to move to your relevancy and needs to move back to where it was where we had a system that had plenty of imperfections that work to solve short and long-term problems that has the tough decisions would make.

the first was one of norm's great lines that we've been talking about in this book if you want to understand the book we believe they move from say the 40-yard line to the 25-yard line but they point to outside the stadium all together. >> the next is the journalist politicians said look we politicians have skin and a few journalists have no skin. susan is the wall street bureau chief for usa today where she writes about the national politics and she has won awards in the charnel beauford prize for distinguished reporting on the presidency and the memorial award for the deadline reporting on the presidency and coverage of the presidency and a whole lot of other awards. she's a regular guest host of

the show on npr. in wichita kansas she received a bachelor's degree from northwestern in journalism from columbia where she was a pulitzer fellow and would be followed by mickey who is a princeton university woodrow wilson school of public policy international affairs. he was a member of the republican leadership and served on the budget of the appropriations committee. he's taught in addition to teaching at princeton he's taught at harvard and he's shared various passports for the constitution project a brookings and for the council on foreign relations to read he is the vice president of the aspen institute's public leadership program and is the latest book the party versus the people, how to turn republicans and

democrats and two americans. there will be published by university press of this summer and i promise before you leave he will baptize all of you. [laughter] for people i have so much admiration that i quoted so many times on the stories. i have a think a little bit of news which is i found out the title of the next book that is coming out between you can figure out from 1992 renewing congress sounds pretty positive in 2000 the permanent campaign. a canadian of antiyearly positive. they are at least pretty neutral. 2006, the broken branch sounds a little perilous. it's even worse than it looks. the book is wrong for your lives. [laughter]

they will just be marching up and down holding a sign. they take on many institutions elsewhere. let me talk for a moment about some of the things they say about the news media, which is appropriate to criticize. there is a lot to criticize about how we do our jobs and how we ought to do them better kuwait we talk about the institution that journalism is doing more for truth telling on the tv ads and that is something organizations including my own is trying to do this year. i think that there has been some move in the last few years to do when you just talked about which is someone says something is black and someone says its white you can't say he says it's white

and he says it's black. the two specific story lines that push journalists to be more willing to call someone to say the truth or not is the movement because we felt early on in the obama campaign it wasn't enough to say he was born in kenya, obama denies being born in kenya. that didn't tell the reader slowly enough what the truth was it continues to come up you say so and so's said it was kenya he is born in hawaii you go on and stay as fact and what we believe to be true. there was a time when i think a

lot of news outlets would report climate change skeptics with a kind of equal force with people are doing for climate change, and i think now when you see reports on the mainstream press their likely the overwhelming predominance of the scientific opinion is in favor of climate change or be leaving in climate change. the one thing, you know, there is nothing in this book to fault exactly, but the one thing i think that might get kind of underestimated in this book is the degree to which it is a conscious choice. our whole group of voters. if you look to the criticism that richard lugar made of richard murdock, and murdoch's defense of himself as it is the same thing. he said he doesn't want to legislate. he said i don't want to legislate. he said he would make the compromise necessary to get things done. murdoch said that's exactly what i want to do. if you let me i'm going to throw sand in the gear of government

and prevent things from getting done. i don't agree with that consensus that has been with washington for so long presenting a different path. and that is true with of the rise of the tea party movement of 2010. voters that voted for the tea party candidate or not tricked into the kind of tactics that supporters of the tea party movement were going to fall back to washington. they said they were willing to take the government to the in of the cliff and over the cliff because they said that was the only way that they could achieve the kind of political and that they wanted to see. so, and the ending seems to me that the fundamental problem here or a fundamental problem is dealing with such a lack of faith in government and such a disconnection the disconnect from the federal government and such a suspicion about the role of the federal government that has led a significant portion of

americans to want to elect candidates that do exactly what they said they were going to do which is to stop things from happening in washington regardless of the consequences. >> thank you so much. i want to correct -- was excellent. i want to correct one thing i said. i said mickey would baptize you to write i realize among others we are joined and appreciated by the ambassador and we would only be baptized if you wish -- [laughter] >> he's already a citizen and minnesota. well, first of all, i want to say that it's a great pleasure to be able to be here with tallman and norma. i have been a friend of theirs for a very long time. there are no to political

scholars that are more respected and who have more credibility with the american people and tom and norm, so i'm delighted to have a chance to be here and help them sell as many books as possible. you are not allowed to leave unless you buy their books and of course i work with susan and e.j. for a long time, and treat we used to be given to be here and may be a part of this. what can i add? first of all, i agree when you talk about it's even worse than it looks. i agree it is. if you really examine what is actually happening on the hill and in every conceivable way how the decisions are made about who gets to sit on what committees after destruction, how the decisions are made every day in terms of whether or not to allow

opposition groups to offer amendments to the process. also if you actually saw this in detail, it is worse than it looks. it is much worse. i would say there's a couple things that i would add. it was certainly right in what tom said that the beginning that the problem isn't equal between the two political parties. you know i ran the books for years ago called quote code reclaiming conservatism declasse in the people that call themselves conservatives today have no idea and some weird ideas that others don't understand what the constitution is so i am not going to take the role of defending the republican party at all. i will say this book can do a

better job of arguing that there is also called on the. but when barack obama wanted to and republican nancy said we won the elections and we will write the bills and the democrats were controlling the house and what the republicans have done since which is to use the closed rules to prevent the amendments from being offered and to shut down the debate and the consideration of alternatives. so, i do not dismiss the criticism of the republican party and dalia agreed that the party has become more walked in against compromise which is the essential ingredient of the nation of the 320 million

people. it's compromise. and if you shut off as a republican party has done, it is a terrible problem. but let's not let the democrats off the hook because they have also been partners in this and there were just a couple of u.s. house members who lost in their primaries as a part of the democratic clarification process. so, what we have here is a system where both parties are focused i have the subtitle of the book that was written not by me but by the affairs and the atlantic magazine how to turn republicans and democrats in two americans is because they are focused on party to be focused on party and vintage. how we win the next election? and i have argued that and i think tom and norm both agree with this, too to a large part of the problem is a suspect so when you look what happened yesterday to indiana and lugar i

think there was a terrible thing that he lost but when robert bennett lost in utah and the primary when joe lieberman lost in connecticut he lost the democratic primary and when mike castle lost in delaware he lost in the republican primary i don't know what would have happened if he had been able to run we have created a system in which the parties themselves can prevent the voters -- present the voters choosing among their options and you have close parties that are dominated by the people fought half the most ideological and that is what moves the process forward they do that in the congressional redistricting and as i mentioned in how the parties choose. i think tom is a great guy and a very smart.

he probably knows about economics. if he were a member of my party i would say you are great you can be perfect and i will put you on the ways and means committee if you promise you are going to stick with the party lines. so i guess what i'm saying is. it is not only of the people that are either elected and how they behave but it's the system that allows these people to dominate and become our officials decision makers in washington. so having thrown that in there i would just say this is a really good book. it's a superb book. and i agree with what norm said. given their reputations which are still. it took a lot of courage to write a book like this and i

admire them both for doing it. >> thank you. >> i feel like -- here's what i would like to mask and i want to remind people listening on the webcast they can send their thoughts using the hash tag evinworse. let me start with a question to you, norma, and the question to susan because the question is mckee has really laid out the question that probably lots of people want you to answer which is you have singled out the republicans. you see they are the insurgent out fliers but they've done a lot of things wrong, too. can you explain why they are

different and then to susan i will give you some time to think about it. i am sympathetic to -- i write an opinion for the column so it's easy to me that here's what hit me this morning when i was looking at the coverage of lugar which is during this primary he was regularly described as a moderate, and i looked up the rating from the american conservative union and its 77%. that is a spectrum that is pretty skewed to the right that is more than three-quarters over and that struck me that the very language of a reporter's use end up being a concession to change the situation that doesn't even acknowledge. so i would like you to sort of think about that.

>> thanks, e.j.. i didn't want to say good things of the panelists before they spoke. it's a thrill to have both of these people here that our role models, and i could add to that can be on a few rows to the sign he was serving in congress when he was a country and because he stood up for the constitution, and for article 1 of the time when his colleagues were trashing it for their own political purposes, she is a true conservative and the kind who used to solve problems and susan is the kind of journalist we used to have a lot more rough. so, having said that, a lot of what she said is true there are no angels. the democrats have manipulated the process, dispensed the regular order when they felt that it was in their interest than particularly during the 40-hour period they were in the majority and especially towards the end of it then became

arrogant, condescending toward the minority and misuse the rules and often would use a proxy power in the committee's to have one person showed up in every amendment even the good ones just because they cut so it's not as if we are looking at angels verses devils, but there is a difference. and one way to express that difference is if you look at what happens after 2000, george w. bush gets elected no coattails at all and in a very weakened position. >> that is a popular vote. >> it would have been easy for democrats to stomp all over him right from the beginning and

basically damage the weakened presidency. the first thing he pushed to initiatives when he got there. no child left behind and tax cuts they move through in a model bipartisan fashion with the impetus coming from george miller and ted kennedy the fact is that in doing so they gave legitimacy to bush and made his presidency stronger. democratic votes enabled those to go through whether you like them or don't like them than we had 9/11 and rallying by both parties behind a range of legislation some of which was controversial but almost unanimous support. and then you move on into the t.a.r.p. program that is rejected first by republicans and it was democrats that saved

and a key member not the same circumstances but without some great momentum. the first thing that happens is every republican votes against his economic plan in both houses acting like a parliamentary minority and now a whole series of programs including the healthcare program where there was a conscious effort to make sure he couldn't get what he wanted to read it's also true he couldn't keep his own democrats together and they have some culpability. with a very significant difference and then you move to 2009. we have a president that has been elected in the landslide with enormous coattails, the clear sign that with the public wanted to read a president that comes in with a 70% approval rating and the worst economy since the great depression. three and half weeks into his presidency he has his economic stimulus program. now you can argue, and i think

that he would, that it was a plan largely hatched in the democratic rooms, but it also had more than one-third of an almost 40% as tax cuts. the end of the single largest tax cut was the extension of the alternative minimum tax which came from chuck grassley who ultimately voted against the plan. three and a half weeks in of a single republican in the house votes for it and three msm at not including those that had their amendments added, and we move on from there from of a single one voting for a reason to deviate to initiative. that for me represents a difference. and a difference would suggest a willingness to try to figure out how you can solve some problems even if there are other places you want to stop on the president and democrats did that with bush at other times but the contrast between where the two parties are now. so they are no angels here but we do have one party that this

not that far from the mid fielder area of the weeks moved and the other party is behind its goal post. >> i see the problems with both sides. i don't like the training because who decides where the middle of the field is and so a lot of republicans would probably say yes but we have set for 40 years we don't want to go there and now at our failure to go there doesn't mean that we have changed but the problem that i see it and it bothers me and it is worse on the republican side though we do have issue after issue i can tell you right now i don't know whether the next nominee for the

supreme court will be nominated by barack obama were y mitt romney. i don't know who will get the chance to make that nomination triet but i will tell you now, and nobody in the room knows what will be but any democrat it's obama that nominates that person, every democrat will vote for him or her and a republican against because that's the situation we've got is that it all comes down to my club against your club, and that is the basic problem. they are only playing to then next election and their own base and they are not worry about solving problems that i agree republicans have been worse, more in lockstep, less willing to engage with issues more what richard murdock was saying it's fairly typical at least for the

republicans that take part in the primaries and i think that's right. >> can you address the question what really struck me it seems the press is allowing one party to redefine where the metal is without acknowledging that this is a new fundamental. >> i think words matter so don't think it's inconsequential weather in the reports the indianapolis star called him a moderate or conservative especially in the climate where that was a weapon that was used against him in the primary. maybe we need to retire for now the word moderate from being used in washington because we have got nobody in the middle. as the book points out in a national study of record there is no republican with a morbid liberal voting record than democrats so now we have literally the zero overlap between the two parties and

maybe moderate isn't the word we should be using. i think you make a good point. lugar has a conservative voting record and a conservative history of half a century in the government and as a major cities a conservative but the reason that the reporters have called him moderate is not because of his voting record but it's because of his manner and in this climate, she has a moderate manner and that he is willing to talk to democrats. he is willing to work with sam and engage with president obama on issues and there are some liberal democrats so maybe that is the language that we should be more careful to use. >> can i just follow a format? i think susan is right. it's about more than ideology it would be a mistake to say this is nothing but an ideological polarization of the parties.

it also has to do with the sort of process of politics and a belief in the legitimacy of the other side and the willingness to engage in the give-and-take. barney frank, you've got to love him pretty well with his ranking republican spencer bachus but once the finished in the committee even though many of his ideas were included, i can't possibly support you because my party has a strategy. it's a political strategy that i can't do anything about it. there is a dynamic at work that affects both parties. there is no question about it. and we may not leave that up enough in the book.

we certainly believe that there is so much now in the strategic partisan behavior it's happening because the parties are operating at a level of parity so that each election there's a chance of the change of party control. there's a kind of relentless to think in those kind of strategic terms, and both of them engaged in that. and so, in that sense i am with mickey completely, but right now there is a sort of fundamental difference between democrats and republicans. republicans partly because of the public and their constituencies are believed that the government has suddenly gotten out of hand. it is just too big and too expensive. the taxes are too high, and

anything associated with of the government accept for the defense department is counterproductive and democrats for their part that were once insurgence themselves are now a more diverse party, and they are a party that is protective of the government to some extent. especially the major elements of the inherited regime going back to teddy roosevelt and woodrow wilson continuing through franklin roosevelt and frankly richard nixon that has a good part of the domestic policy apparatus. they are realistic now. they are not filed by liberals wanting to socialize activities.

it's a joke. the understand that the demographic forces at work and health care cost increases will make and they will be absolutely essential unstable and weekend overtime, so they are fully willing to engage in those negotiations. whenever i see a press report well, republicans say no new taxes and democrats say don't touch. and i said which democrats. the president isn't saying it. the leadership of the parties are saying it. they are perfectly prepared to negotiate. but since everyone understands if you are serious about the deficits and the debt you don't

begin our program they've and imagine how you are going to sort of put that together in the end. and so, i think that is a sort of fundamental difference. democrats are protective, and therefore their political incentives are to play the same hardball with permanent campaign hardball, they are not prepared to put at risk the full faith and credit of the united states. they are not prepared to shut the government down. they just won't do that because they believe the government plays an important role. conservatives, real conservatives want the government that they have, and not a bit more that they need, but they are not wild and crazy

about just dumping on that. and i think we have -- it is almost a radical perspective, not a conservative perspective. again, it is one that is much more protective of the government, and i think the difference is real. >> i want to threw out a theory we may not want to go after the hash tag triet 1 feet. it's all bill clinton's be fivefold, and starting in the 1990's, moderate republicans began leaving the party in large numbers and places like the counties around philadelphia, said the john heinz republicans are not republicans any more and you have created an entirely different electorate to witness what happened in delaware or indiana. i will leave that there and somebody can comment. thank you. >> thank you. first of all --

[laughter] one is from robert kelley that is a student at the american university, and he says if there is a systemic problem what changes to the panel's feel are the most he is a self-described aspiring policy analyst and the voters getting what they deserve and what are they going to wait on? >> they look at the politicians, no great shakes. >> welcome first there are systemic problems and have this book is about what not to do. this is not something that is

going to be solved by tinkering with the institutions or even the institutional set up. xu some degree it is a cultural problem and that is the tribal politics. and it's also built into a broad media system. we can talk about the primary electorate but people like grover norquist and rush limbaugh and cable television trucks and talk-radio and they might otherwise be willing to look for solutions and can't because if they do they are dead if. they are beyond outrageous and you get no push back because whenever you have a political figure who just try is a little bit to say that is too much the

new world of the media basically tells us that the business model that works is the fox news model and somehow a network of an audience at any given time as to in the half million people they can make more profits than all three network news divisions combined with an audience of 40 million people. and is that true? >> $700 million. it's enormously successful. and if we abandon that business model, if fox news to mauro says all right, here is the new message from roger ailes, can't we all just get along? we may not like what this president likes to do but he is a good man and we can find ways to work with them. i will guarantee you is that within a week there would be a news channel that take the old message and the two and a half million people at any given time

which is 20 million people will gravitate over there and that is where the moneymaking would be. so it's very hard to change this stuff. how do you create a public square you can share a common set of facts and then the date, hammer and talk over assertions. at the same time getting to what mckee said, we have to find ways to broaden the electorate. we are both big fans having spent time in australia big fans of the australian system in the polls. i want to commend the details here, but basically a small fine you can vote for none of the above have lead over many decades to the 95% plus the turnout in australia. high turnout is not an end of itself, the former soviet union had 95% turnout that doesn't reflect health and the political system. chicago can get to 110% but with

the australian politicians will tell you is if you know that your base is going to be fair, their base is going to be there you don't focus on energizing and exciting and schering the crap out of your base or suppressing the oversight to read you have to focus on the voters in the middle and it changes the issues that you talk about. they don't talk a lot in their campaigns about dumbs. they talk about the economy, jobs, the climate, education and things that matter and they don't use the kind of language that we use in our campaign because they're scared or turn off the voters in the middle. at the center that since we don't like mandatory anything now come to be a champion of the mega millions lottery where your ticket is your voting stock of coming and if you look at the last mega millions where people camped out three days in advance

to be given to get a ticket where of course let's face it the chance of winning was less than being struck by lightning twice in a day put a few hundred million dollars into this and we will up their turnout significantly. i think they are an easier way to move in a direction and a lot of things can be done. we have to do some changes in the system including the filibuster. >> can i add a word? >> i fifa to questions go to get their. how to make it better and isn't it the public's fault after dhaka? i think they fit very well together. if you have a mismatch, if you have ideologically polarized parties operating in a separation of power systems you can alter the party's over time and that is what norm has been talking about to moderate the parties and the best way to do it is to expand so much is

possible because those that do not participate now are ones with less absolutely committed polarized views and reinforcement from australia and the dozens of other democracies that have some form of mandatory attendance the other thing is you say we've got these parties let's have a couple system in which they can get something done. that means fundamental reform of the senate's. i believe the united states senate is today the most dysfunctional legislative body in the space world. the very process that in the past looking out at the center here in the past it would lead

people to come together across party lines to try to work out some agreement and now deutsch just the opposite. fighting reinforce the absolute partisan divide between the parties and individuals senators have come to show the individual holds that frankly the partisanship and the culture is such that the senate cannot function under its current rules and that is a big change that is needed. one final thing, maybe a change in the public come sure it is the public's fault. they get frustrated and angry because the economy didn't improve, and they changed the team in the power and created a divided party government and the republican majority that believed had a public mandate to

do just what they said they would do, and they worked hard to devotee and the public hated it. so, it is in a sense when they got what they asked for if not consciously, unconsciously. its registered to vote and had to have the knowledge of the typical attendees. >> it's not going to happen. people are busy and just keeping wife told investing in the two hours reading of the times and "the wall street journal" every day, but it does mean we've got to figure out a way to the it's very hard in the constitutional system to make the choice more clear to hold individuals

accountable. the divided party government has become the dean of american democracy now. it worked under our conditions. it doesn't work now. thank you. >> mckee has some ideas and i want to bring him back in that sort of turn to the audience. can we have some microphones to suchard and we have a lot of hands. this gentleman right up front. yes, sir. >> the external job of the more rigid leaning republican party said it was the voter at some level. it's profitability and the inevitability of the money being the more extremist ideas in the media and elsewhere comes of a